The Widow of Glenbrae

The rain had reached Glenbrae before she did.

It sheeted across the darkening hills in a gray veil and beat against the carriage roof with the steady, vindictive patience of a creditor who knew his man could not escape him. Mrs Catriona Bell sat very straight beneath it, gloved hands folded over the reticule in her lap, and watched the outline of Glenbrae House emerge by degrees from the wet evening: first the gateposts with their weathered stone stags, then the long drive curving between black yews, and at last the house itself, broad-fronted and severe, all pale ashlar and dark windows under a lowering sky.

Home, she thought, and did not know whether the word was bitter or absurd.

It had been five years since she had crossed this threshold as a bride. In those years she had been mistress of the house only in the ornamental sense in which a silver epergne is mistress of a dining table: polished, displayed, and moved aside whenever business began. Her husband had taken the ledgers to his study and the estate to his factor and left her the poultry accounts, the stillroom, and whatever graceful ignorance was expected to become a woman of good sense.

Now Andrew Bell was in his grave at St. Ninian’s kirkyard, and Catriona had returned under her widow’s cap and plain black travelling cloak to claim what should always have been shown to her.

The carriage lurched to a halt. Before the footman could lower the step, the front door had opened and a spill of candlelight ran over the wet stones. Mrs Grant, the housekeeper, came down two steps despite the rain, her skirts gathered and her face composed into that look of formal welcome which barely concealed a stronger private feeling.

“Mrs Bell,” she said as Catriona descended. “We are glad to have you at Glenbrae.”

The words were proper. The emphasis was not. Glad to have you, at last.

“Thank you, Mrs Grant.” Catriona gave her hand a brief pressure. “I trust all is in order.”

Mrs Grant’s mouth altered almost imperceptibly. “As much as may be expected.”

That, too, was proper enough to pass without notice and plain enough to deserve one. Catriona lifted her face to the rain-silvered frontage of the house and drew one slow breath. Damp stone, peat smoke, cold air, and the faint remembered sweetness of the rose borders somewhere beyond the dark. Her pulse beat hard and even.

“I understand Mr Sloane is here,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. In the drawing room. Miss Forsyth is with him.”

Of course she was. Helena Forsyth had been Andrew’s cousin and frequent guest before she became his chief mourner in all but title. If grief alone could have resurrected a man, Helena’s sighs would have done it by now.

“And the captain?” Catriona asked, removing her gloves finger by finger.

Mrs Grant blinked. “Captain Kinnaird arrived before dinner.”

So Alistair Sloane had not exaggerated in his letter. He had indeed brought his adviser into her house before she had set foot in it.

For one instant heat moved under Catriona’s skin, swift as the strike of a match. It did not reach her face. “Then I ought not keep my guests waiting.”

The hall was as she remembered it: flagged floor, antlers above the doors, family portraits climbing the staircase in oil-dark dignity. The lamps had been lit against the storm; they made islands of honey-colored light under the carved beams and left the corners in shadow. Her damp hem whispered over the stone as she crossed to the stairs, gave orders for hot water and the unstrapping of trunks, and allowed Morag, her maid, to help her exchange wet travel things for black silk suited to dinner.

She took no jewels save a pair of jet drops at her ears. Widowhood gave a woman a useful species of armor. No one expected softness in black.

Yet when she stood before the mirror, she knew very well what the glass returned. Not softness, perhaps, but something no amount of mourning silk could wholly repress: the warm vitality of her mouth, the curve of her throat above the severe bodice, the composure in her gray eyes sharpened tonight to purpose. Andrew had once told her she was never more handsome than when vexed. He had meant to flatter and to dismiss her in the same breath.

She laid a hand flat on the dressing table until the old anger settled into something colder and more serviceable.

“Mrs Grant says they are all below,” Morag murmured, setting straight one fold at Catriona’s shoulder.

“Then let them look at me and remember I belong here.”

Morag’s eyes met hers briefly in the mirror, bright with the fierce loyalty of a Highland woman whose opinions on the Bell family had never been difficult to guess. “Aye, ma’am.”

Catriona went down alone.

The drawing room doors stood half open. Firelight breathed across the polished floorboards and picked out the gilt on mirror and frame. She heard voices before she entered: Sloane’s smooth measured tones, Helena’s softer, carrying lament turned to conversation, and a third voice she did not know.

It was a man’s voice, low and spare, with a roughness in it that sounded less like coarseness than old damage. It ceased as she appeared.

All three rose.

Alistair Sloane came forward first, all legal propriety and self-command, his brown hair already thinning, his expression arranged into respectful concern. He bowed over her hand without touching it. “Mrs Bell. Permit me to offer once more my condolences.”

“Thank you, Mr Sloane.”

His eyes, shrewd and pale, searched her face for signs of collapse and found none. A disappointment, perhaps.

Helena approached next in a drift of dove-gray silk unsuitable for deep mourning but artfully subdued. She embraced Catriona with a fragrant rustle and held her half a moment too long.

“My poor dear Catriona. This return must cost you dearly.”

“It costs me a wet road from Edinburgh and a missed night’s sleep,” Catriona said. “I hope to survive both.”

Helena leaned back, lips parting in a little injured smile. “You are very brave.”

Bravery was another word often used for women who refused to melt on command. Catriona was about to reply when she became aware of the remaining man not moving toward her at all.

He stood near the hearth, one hand braced on the mantel, as if the leg set slightly behind the other required the support. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, he wore evening clothes cut with military plainness rather than fashion’s flourish. The fire laid copper and gold in his hair and marked one cheekbone, leaving the rest of his face in hard planes of shadow. He was not handsome in any polished drawing-room style. His nose looked as if it had once been broken. There was a pale line near his temple vanishing into his hair. His mouth was too firm to be easy and not quite stern enough to be severe.

But his eyes, when they came to her, held her.

They were a deep, cool blue, startling in so dark a face, and they had the singularly discomposing quality of seeming to see more than civility required. Not boldly; not rudely; simply with a complete and undeceived attention she had not invited and could not instantly deflect.

Sloane turned. “May I present Captain Malcolm Kinnaird. Captain, Mrs Bell.”

Kinnaird bowed. There was the faintest drag in the movement, and she understood then that the support at the mantel was no pose but necessity. “Mrs Bell.”

His voice in direct address was even rougher than it had seemed from the hall. Not unpleasant. Merely impossible to mistake.

“Captain.” She inclined her head. “I was not informed I should have another guest.”

Sloane interposed with a smoothness that announced prior rehearsal. “The captain has been of invaluable assistance to several gentlemen in the district where estate matters have become—temporarily clouded. Given the irregularities I mentioned in my last letter, I thought it prudent—”

“To import male authority before I had crossed my own threshold?” Catriona said.

A silence followed. Helena lowered her lashes as if in distress. Sloane coughed lightly.

Captain Kinnaird did not look distressed at all. If anything, the corner of his mouth altered by the merest fraction.

“I should be sorry,” he said, “to be mistaken for an import. I was born twenty miles from here.”

There was wit in the answer, but no servile effort to soothe her. That made him more irritating.

“Then local authority,” she returned.

His gaze stayed on hers. “A thing often overvalued.”

For one suspended instant she had the absurd sensation that they were not in a crowded drawing room but alone on some narrow ledge where a single false step might send either of them over. The feeling was not fear. It was too keen for that.

Sloane, perhaps sensing danger he could not quite define, invited them all into dinner.

The dining room had been aired and polished into readiness for her return. Candles ran in twin lines down the center of the table, reflected a hundredfold in the old silver. The rain rattled fitfully at the long windows and gave the room a closeness not wholly attributable to heat. Catriona took her seat at the head as if she had never sat anywhere else. To her right, by Sloane’s arrangement, was Captain Kinnaird. To her left sat Helena, with Mr Sloane opposite.

An opening skirmish, then, with witnesses.

Soup was served. The first exchanges concerned roads, weather, the difficulties of travel from Edinburgh in November, and other irrelevancies under which people of breeding often conceal the true battle. Catriona answered calmly, asked after the health of Sloane’s aunt, admired Helena’s fortitude in remaining so long at Glenbrae after Andrew’s death, and did not once mention papers or accounts.

Yet all the while she was aware of the man to her right.

Not because he stared. He did not. A less disciplined man might have done so; she had seen enough appetite in gentlemen to know its signs. Kinnaird possessed, instead, an economy of attention that proved more dangerous. He attended when spoken to. He listened when others spoke. When he turned his head toward her, it was with an exactness that suggested intention rather than impulse. Once, when the footman leaned to refill her glass, Kinnaird’s hand shifted from beside his plate by some instinct of masculine watchfulness, as if to steady stem or tray should either slip. He did not touch her. The almost was more noticeable than touch would have been.

“Captain Kinnaird has seen active service,” Helena said, delicately spearing a morsel of trout. “Mr Sloane tells me he has a remarkable gift for discovering what other men hide.”

“A gift for suspicion is less remarkable than useful,” Kinnaird said.

“And how acquired?” Catriona asked.

He set down his spoon. “In places where trusting the wrong account could have one shot before breakfast.”

Helena gave a tiny shudder of appreciation. “How dreadful.”

“It was inconvenient,” he said.

Catriona ought not to have smiled. She did.

He saw it. She knew because his eyes changed, not softening, precisely, but sharpening upon that brief betrayal of amusement as if he had won some private point.

Sloane folded his napkin with legal precision. “The captain is inclined to understatement. During the Peninsula campaigns he distinguished himself considerably.”

“There is no need to embroider me, Sloane,” Kinnaird said without looking at him.

“My dear captain, facts are not embroidery.”

“On solicitors they often are.”

Helena laughed. Sloane looked pained. Catriona sipped her wine to hide another smile.

So he could strike. Good. Better a man who showed his steel than one who concealed it in velvet.

The first course was removed. Pheasant replaced it, fragrant with juniper. Outside, the wind rose and drove rain against the panes in a long hiss. The house seemed to gather itself around them, old stone holding weather, warmth, and strain in equal measure.

At last Sloane ventured toward his true subject. “Mrs Bell, I hope you will not think me officious if I say I was relieved to receive your note agreeing to my review of the estate accounts.”

“I agreed to a review,” she said. “I did not agree to guardianship.”

“No one proposes guardianship.”

“Men often propose things under gentler names.”

Helena set down her fork. “Surely, Catriona, no one can wish to deprive you of management. It is only that business affairs are so vexing, and in your bereaved condition—”

“My bereaved condition does not impair my arithmetic, Miss Forsyth.”

Color touched Helena’s cheeks. “I only meant—”

“I know what you meant.”

Sloane intervened hastily. “If I may explain. Several rents appear to have been entered twice in the quarter books, while certain disbursements have no matching receipts. There are also references to leases I have not yet found in the charter chest. Your late husband kept a number of papers privately, as you know.”

As you know. Catriona cut a slice of pheasant more cleanly than necessary.

“As I know,” she said. “My late husband considered me equal to arranging flowers and receiving callers. On rare occasions he permitted me to sign household orders.”

Kinnaird said nothing. She could feel his attention nevertheless.

Sloane spread his hands. “All the more reason for careful assistance now.”

“I shall read every line myself.”

“That may prove burdensome.”

“Then I shall be burdened.”

“Mrs Bell.” Sloane’s tone acquired a patience that made her want to overturn the silver epergne in his face. “The estate is extensive. There are tenants to reassure, improvements left half-finished, a lawsuit threatened over boundary stones at the east march, and questions regarding your jointure besides. Surely you cannot wish to undertake all that unadvised.”

“I wish,” she said, “not to have decisions made for me in my absence and explained to me afterward as kindness.”

The words landed harder than she had intended. Helena stared down at her plate. Sloane’s expression became guarded.

Only Kinnaird answered at once.

“No one likes to be handled,” he said.

It was not agreement exactly. It was recognition, and something in Catriona eased against her will.

She turned to him. “Then perhaps, Captain, you can tell me why you accepted the invitation.”

His knife and fork rested quietly on either side of his plate. “Because Sloane believed someone has been cheating Glenbrae.”

“Believed, or knows?”

“Belief first. Knowledge, if we are diligent.”

“And your role is to frighten a confession from servants? Intimidate factors? Search desks?”

Helena made a distressed sound. “Catriona.”

Kinnaird’s eyes remained on Catriona’s face. “My role is to follow what is false until it leads to what is true.”

The answer, stripped of ornament, ought to have sounded pompous. In his mouth it did not. It sounded like habit. Or creed.

“And if what is true displeases me?”

“Truth usually does someone the discourtesy.”

She looked at him for a moment too long. There was no challenge in his posture now, only steadiness. A soldier’s stillness. Yet under it she sensed force held in reserve. Not unlike her own, perhaps. The thought was unwelcome.

“Very philosophical,” she said at last.

“No, ma’am. Merely expensive experience.”

The title ma’am was correct and faintly distancing. She disliked the little retreat in it after the sharper edge that had existed between them. More absurd still, she noticed she disliked it enough to answer with a pointed courtesy of her own.

“Then let us hope your experience proves worth Mr Sloane’s confidence, Captain Kinnaird.”

His glance flicked to her mouth, so brief she might have imagined it if the movement had not sent a strange hot awareness along the back of her neck.

“I hope so too, Mrs Bell,” he said.

Dessert came and went in a haze of preserved pears and oatcakes. The conversation broadened by force to neighboring families, the condition of the roads to Inveraray, the possibility of early snow. Helena recounted some pious nonsense spoken at Andrew’s funeral, and Catriona answered where she must. Through it all she was conscious of the captain’s leg stretching awkwardly once beneath the table and drawing back at once as if he regretted the involuntary revelation. The movement brushed the hem of her gown.

Only cloth against cloth. Nothing. Yet she felt it with ridiculous clarity.

She set down her glass before her hand betrayed her.

No one else could have noticed. Kinnaird did. His head turned the smallest degree.

“Are you chilled, Mrs Bell?”

The concern was formal. The voice under it was not.

“Not in the least.”

“Shall I ask for the fire to be built higher?”

“I assure you I am perfectly warm.”

He held her gaze for one beat, and something unmistakable passed between them then: the knowledge that neither of them spoke of the temperature of the room.

Helena rose as soon as propriety allowed, and Catriona with her. The gentlemen remained behind with their wine. In the drawing room, Helena moved to the pianoforte and touched the keys without commitment.

“You were severe with Mr Sloane,” she observed.

Catriona accepted tea from the maid. “Mr Sloane survives severity as well as any man.”

“He means to help you.”

“He means to direct me.”

Helena’s fingers found a mournful chord. “Can you wonder if he thinks direction necessary? Dear Andrew was so exacting in business. It is difficult to imagine anyone replacing him.”

Catriona turned her cup slowly in its saucer. “I do not mean to replace him. I mean to know what he did.”

Helena glanced up. “There are things, surely, which ladies are happier not knowing.”

“Are you one of those ladies?”

Helena’s lashes lowered. “I hope I am a practical one.”

Practical women, in Catriona’s experience, generally meant women practical on behalf of men.

Before she could answer, the door opened and the gentlemen returned. Sloane took up a periodical. Helena sat at the pianoforte and obliged the room with a Scottish air rendered so delicately it scarcely seemed to possess bones. Catriona stood near the fire, one hand on the marble mantel, and watched the rain stream down the windows.

She sensed Kinnaird before she heard him.

“Mrs Bell.”

She turned. They were not alone, but the room had arranged itself into pockets of inattention. Helena was intent upon her music. Sloane had spectacles on his nose and a journal in hand. The nearest lamp left Kinnaird half in shadow again.

“Captain.”

He came no nearer than politeness sanctioned. “I owe you an apology.”

“For what offense?”

“For entering your affairs before being invited. You were right to dislike it.”

She had not expected surrender. It disordered her more than opposition would have done. “Then why remain?”

“Because you need the truth more than you need the comfort of being consulted first.”

The words should have angered her. Instead they struck against the very conviction that had brought her here. She drew herself up.

“You are singularly free with hard sayings for a man newly arrived.”

“I find soft ones less honest.”

“Honesty is not always a social virtue.”

“No. But it may still be useful.”

The fire crackled between them. A coal shifted and dropped inward in a brief collapse of red.

She looked at his hand where it rested on the head of his cane—she had not noticed him carrying one before dinner, though now she saw it plainly, dark wood, plain knob, military plainness again. The hand itself was brown and powerful, with a pale scar crossing one knuckle. A dangerous hand, she thought suddenly, though whether because it had likely done violence or because she could too easily imagine its restraint, she could not have said.

That way lay foolishness.

“Very well,” she said. “Let us speak honestly. I do not know you. Mr Sloane may esteem you. That is not reason enough for me to do the same.”

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

“I do not enjoy being managed.”

“I had gathered that.”

“And if any man in this house presumes widowhood makes me pliable, he will discover his error.”

A faint light touched his eyes. “That too I had gathered.”

“Then we understand one another.”

“Not yet.”

It was spoken quietly, but the words landed low in her body with the force of a hand closing unexpectedly around her waist. For one absurd instant she could not answer.

He seemed to realize, perhaps too late, what shape the sentence had taken between them. His jaw hardened. “I mean only that understanding is better earned than assumed.”

“Of course,” she said, and was grateful her voice sounded composed.

From the pianoforte Helena’s music fluttered to a stop. Sloane looked up from his periodical. The room resumed its public dimensions.

Kinnaird inclined his head. “Tomorrow, if you permit it, I should like to begin with the late Mr Bell’s study.”

So that was the first field of battle. Andrew’s sanctum. The locked drawers, the pigeonholes full of memoranda, the desk from which her husband had dismissed her with a smile more often than with anger. The thought made her blood rise again, cleanly this time.

“You may look,” she said. “In my presence.”

“I expected no less.”

“Good.”

There was nothing more in the word, and too much.

He stepped back. Sloane came at once to speak of keys and inventory books and whether ten o’clock might suit. Catriona answered him; Helena asked if anyone wished another song; a servant entered with more coal. The ordinary motions of the evening closed over the moment as water closes over a stone.

Yet when at last she went up to her chamber and dismissed Morag after the unpinning of her hair, she stood for a long while at the window in her shift and looked down at the black sweep of the drive, the yews bowed under rain, the courtyard lantern wavering in the gusts.

Somewhere below, in one of the guest rooms, slept the man who had been brought to pry open her husband’s secrets.

She ought to have thought only of ledgers, receipts, leases, theft.

Instead she thought of a rough voice saying, Not yet, and of blue eyes that had looked at her as if grief, anger, silk, and widow’s black were all poor disguises for whatever lived underneath.

Catriona laid her palm against the cold glass until it steadied her.

Tomorrow she would unlock Andrew Bell’s study and begin to discover what had been hidden from her. Captain Malcolm Kinnaird, with all his bluntness and unwanted perception, would merely be a tool in that work.

She repeated the thought until it sounded almost true, and then she went to bed.